Elysium
by With Beloved
Summary: E‧ly‧si‧um : noun : any place or state of perfect happiness paradise. Sakura's retold story.
1. I

**Elysium **

I.

There was nothing I wanted more than to love you.

This was what inevitably killed me. My dreams, my hopes, my life—everything I did was so that in fact, I could be closer to you. I was ready to willingly sacrifice everything I had to be with you. It didn't matter if you didn't love me, because you had never loved me in the first place. Do you know how many friends I betrayed because of you? Do you know how many people I disappointed? How many people I killed?

But how could you _possibly_ understand all that?

How could you _possibly_ understand?

A person will do anything for their beloved's happiness. They will laugh with you, help you, comfort you, fight with you, and cry honestly when you're hurt. But you—a sadistic, loveless soul—will never understand this. When I voraciously craved the small patch of pale skin just above the collar of your kimono, you didn't say anything. When I tentatively leaned towards your pasty, colorless lips, you didn't say anything. When I offered my body to you as a tool, you didn't even look at me.

But I don't blame you. I can't blame you. Even now I feebly conjure up a corporeal manifestation of you from my tired memories, touching your dead heart, swallowing my own bitter sadness and wishing for the unseen. If I told you I still wanted to be with you, you'd laugh—one of the few sprays of cruel amusement. But it's true. No matter what you say,

I love you, but that can only be possible if I love the truth more.

You, Sasuke, were an utter _bastard_.


	2. II

**Elysium**

II.

I have seen a man die, once.

I was twelve and I was crying. He was a brutal murderer who sacrificed others for his own needs. He let himself be used as a tool, and in turn unjustly used others. There was not a single redeeming feature about him, and yet I began to cry uncontrollably the moment he uttered soft farewell words to his enemies, regretfully wishing he could evade hell.

Why is that?

I realize I have stopped believing in God the moment I understood what I lived for. I realize putting one's faith in the unseen is scorned as weakness. I realize I am too tired to pray everyday, and I notice how I am the happiest when those spiritual burdens are left forgotten.

So why, I have to wonder, did I wish that man would go where he wanted to?

I truthfully didn't want him to go to heaven or hell, if such perfect balance of paradise and martyrdom existed. He didn't deserve either. I wanted his spirit to linger, but his body to quietly decompose within the earth without signing in Satan's little black book.

I wanted him to find his own meaning.

I wanted him to seek his own path.

I guess, in a way, I simply wanted him to be free.

-

You think you know the world when you're young. Bold, brash and naïve are we in our greatest years, falling under the misconception that our future is in our hands. How much of our lives do we really control? How much of it is being controlled, subjected to the unknown's every whim?

It is a funny thing, power. The insatiable greed for strength surpasses all other senses, consuming you, swallowing you whole, until spitting you out weak and battered when you grow wary of power and power tires of you.

I think this is what happened to you.

You were so frail and skeletal the day you limped back into my arms, falling unconscious. There was no love in this action—only a man who had lost against the dangerous, unwritten rules of power. Your life was very dependent on whether I had forgiven you. Even if you didn't speak a word, I knew. No one in Konoha wanted you. Everyone hated you. Everyone despised you. Tell me, how did it feel to be so unwanted? How did it feel to lose everything you ever cared about?

Then I can relate to you. We human beings are driven by primitive instincts of lust. We are such disgusting, filthy creatures, satisfying this lust with selfish motivations and an intense competition of life and death. To reach you, I did everything I could to keep you. I lied, I cheated, I bargained, lost a friend and almost died. When I woke up in the quaint hospital room, you were, I perceived, already gone.

That day, since many years, I began to cry again.


End file.
